The Most Ridiculous Large Screen TV Adventure
How a Father and Daughter Bonded Over a Walmart Purchase
Many fathers bond with their daughters through special travel experiences, shared hobbies or through watching Love is Blind and Farmer takes a Wife. My experience is a bit different. My daughter, Danielle, and I bonded through a roller coaster five-month journey of purchasing and returning a fifty-five-inch flat screen television.
It started innocently with a trip to Walmart to help Danielle purchase items for her new Tampa apartment. I have the infamous $456.58 Walmart receipt from our December 5th shopping excursion framed in my office. Among the items purchased were sandwich bags, brillo pads and a tape measure. The most expensive item was the $248 television.
Unfortunately, after only two weeks of use, large vertical lines began appearing on the screen making it impossible to enjoy the Kardashians and the latest Netflix documentary about a college father bonding with his daughter by moving into her college dorm and sleeping with her roommates. When horizontal lines also joined the screen, the television became unwatchable.
Luckily, Danielle had a copy of the receipt on her phone. Using all of her strength and ingenuity, she loaded the TV into her car and triumphantly delivered it to the Walmart return counter.
It is the call that all parents dread. Danielle was in tears explaining that the manager would not take back the TV because it was not returned in the original box. Danielle and I quickly agreed that it would be highly unusual for anybody to keep a large screen TV box for weeks in their studio apartment in the event that their screen froze while trying to see who Kylie and Kendall were dating. As a wise father and consumer, I suggested that she return to the counter and appeal to the customer service manager since it was such an obviously ridiculous policy.
That didn’t work out so well. The manager explained that the box policy could be found in small print somewhere on the Walmart website and that she would be fired if she accepted the return. Danielle rolled the TV back to her car and then dragged it back to her fourth-floor apartment to sit sadly in the corner.
Danielle searched the Walmart website and found no mention of the secret small print box return policy. Once again, sage fatherly guidance was in order. I suggested that she call Walmart again and hopefully talk to a different manager who might have a different answer.
I then got the call that every parent dreams about. Danielle said that I was a genius and that she was excited to report that the manager she talked to the second time said that she could return the TV without a box as long as she had the receipt.
A couple hours later while I was still patting myself on the back, I got another call from Danielle. She was distraught. After heroically schlepping the TV back to the Walmart return counter, she was told that she needed the original receipt and that a copy on her phone would not be acceptable. Unfortunately, I had the original receipt and I lived one thousand miles from both her apartment and the Walmart superstore.
I could have mailed her the receipt and had her return the TV for the third time, but the receipt stated that returns had to be made in thirty days and by that time, we wouldn’t have made the deadline. Neither one of us believed that the friendly Walmart customer service representative would risk getting fired by making an exception to the thirty-day return policy.
At that point, I told my daughter to buy another TV from a different store and that in the meantime I would dispute the charge on my credit card. I explained to my credit card company that $248 of the $456.58 Walmart charge was for the broken TV. They immediately put a hold on the entire $456.58 charge and explained that they would contact Walmart and give them ninety days to respond to the dispute.
Fortunately, although Walmart store managers are skilled in rejecting returns, they are not as good with responding to E-mails. Since Walmart failed to respond in ninety days, the dispute was resolved in my favor and the entire $456.58 charge was removed from my credit card bill. A big thank you to Walmart for sponsoring the set-up of Danielle’s Tampa apartment.
I visited Danielle in Tampa five months after her move and saw that she still had her broken TV leaning against her hallway wall. I told her I would do a quick search of the world wide web and find a “better place” for the television to “rest.” Unfortunately, the task proved so difficult that Danielle and I were both nearly in tears. The recycling centers were not close by, had limited hours and had several pages of restrictions. Best Buy would provide a final resting place for a fee of thirty dollars, but only for televisions less than fifty inches. The majority of places with recycling in their names explicitly stated “No TVs.”
Finally, my google search pointed me to American Recycling. It was open and only six miles away. The picture on the web showed a well fenced in storage shed and a customer review from Mr. Mike that stated, “They pay better than other scrap yards, but this place is ridiculous.”
We made a call to confirm that they would take our television, but encountered a language barrier that prevented us from confirming their recycling policies. However, we were able to communicate enough to confirm that they were open. We informed them that we would be over shortly.
We easily found American Recycling as it was located in an industrial area just beyond the end of the Tampa Bay airport runway. Unfortunately, we couldn’t figure out where to enter the facility or how we could locate the American Recycling customer representative. We slowly drove around the facility four times noticing two separate openings in the tall fence that protected the recycling treasures. There were several ominous “No trespassing” signs posted on the fence.
Finally, we pulled through one of the openings and I approached a gentleman who was busy sorting through the recycling products. I politely explained that we had journeyed to this outpost to humanely recycle our broken Walmart TV. He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and motioned for us to back up our car and enter through the other opening in the fence.
We were tempted to drive away and see if Best Buy would consider taking our fifty-five-inch TV for a thirty-dollar recycling fee plus a ten-dollar “gratuity”, but our sense of adventure convinced us to reenter the facility through the alternate opening.
As our car followed a narrow path, we soon came to a drive-up window. I rolled down the car window and was greeted by a smiling woman with a quizzical look. While I was explaining that we were there to drop off our TV, Danielle noticed a sign next to the window that included the words “No TVs.”
Finally, the woman pointed to us to move the car forward to the man who had previously directed us to the correct entrance. When we reached the man, I quickly exited the car, took out the TV and placed it safely on the ground. I then hopped back in the car and instructed Danielle to quickly drive away. Unfortunately, that is when we heard a loud commotion. Three men near the drive-thru window were yelling instructions in an unfamiliar language and motioning us to back up the car.
Outnumbered, we slowly did what we were told and anxiously awaited our fate. When we reached the window, the woman looked me in the eye and said “Two dollars.” Relieved, I reached for my wallet to pay what I thought was a nominal recycling fee. The woman burst out laughing. She had just reached into her cash register to pay me two dollars. Mr. Mike was correct. American Recycling was a ridiculous place.
We were all smiles as we exited through the American Recycling fence to start our drive home. But first, we had to make an important stop. With our two-dollar windfall in hand, I typed “Dollar Store” into my GPS machine and we were off in search of new memories.
